Episode 2053 Scott Adams: Depositor Risk, AI Risk, Nigerian Hoaxers, Trump Risk, Huge Power Shift
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Depositor risk and AI
Nigerian HOAXERS
Wage gap HOAXING
Cocky Chipmunk versus Trump
Huge power shift
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If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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Well, today's gonna be a little different because it appears that the streaming is down on the locals' platform.
So I'll be here at the YouTube Hoping the locals people see my message and come over here and watch this for now instead.
Looks like there might be some kind of upgrade going on over there.
But, today will be amazing even on YouTube alone.
Today, we might not need... Oh!
My goodness!
It looks as though locals just came online.
Well, you're lucky because you got here just in time.
If it's really working, I can't tell yet.
But, If you'd like to take this bad start for a morning to a level that has never been achieved before this morning, all you need is a cupper, a mugger, a glass, a tanker, a chalice, a sign, a canteen, a jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine at the end of the day.
The thing that makes everything better is called the simultaneous sip.
It happens now.
Go.
Yes, I believe Locals is working and YouTube's working.
It's all coming together now.
In one big beautiful kind of thing.
And it's good, because today is the best show I've ever given.
Well, I mean, I'm optimistic.
Feels like it's going to go that direction.
I just feel it.
And probably you would like to start by knowing what's the funniest comic I've ever written.
Called Robots Read News.
Well, apparently that was yesterday, according to the people who read it.
If you haven't seen my alternative comic, it runs in the Locals platform.
And along with Dilbert Reborn, it's all there.
And Micro Lessons and all kinds of good stuff.
But today's Robot Read News is breaking.
Ex-President Donald Trump has fired his entire campaign staff.
Trump announced on Truth Social that he is turning that function over to one volunteer he calls a quote superstar.
His name is Alvin Bragg.
Trump has affectionately nicknamed him the cocky chipmunk.
Now if you didn't know that Alvin Bragg is the prosecutor who's trying to get Trump and His first name is Alvin, that sounds like a chipmunk, and his last name is Bragg, that sounds kind of cocky, so he's the Cocky Chipmunk.
And I think Trump should take that nickname.
Good suggestion.
So there's that.
By the way, if you ever want to see a good example of how to use intonation, let me make this private over here.
I was listening to Dave Rubin, On Dave Rubin's podcast video.
And during the thing, he did a commercial.
So he just read a long, boring commercial for some product.
And you have to hear Dave Rubin read boring advertising and make it sound interesting without changing any of the words.
It's actually fascinating.
He does it with intonation alone.
So, you can teach it, but you'd never be that good at it.
Because he's got some kind of extra gear going on.
But I'll give you, well, let me give you an example.
So if I were reading the simultaneous sip, instead of saying, a cup or a mug or a glass, if you were to do it, The interesting way, let's say it's some boring advertisement, you'd be like, a cup, a mug, or even a glass!
You know, like you throw yourself into it.
And you hit words, you emphasize words that don't need to be emphasized.
It's sort of the old newscaster trick.
But I've never seen anybody do it better.
It's actually the best variation within a sentence that you'll ever see.
You gotta watch it just for the technique.
It was fascinating.
He actually made me listen to an entire long commercial just because the technique was so good.
It was actually, it was just sort of jaw-dropping to see how good he is at that.
Alright, well, I feel like there's a huge power shift happening everywhere.
Are you feeling it too?
It feels like everything that was stable is becoming unstable, but it's also in the service of shifting power from one place to another.
I'm not sure it's bad.
It's just different than anything I've ever seen.
It's like all the power everywhere is being redistributed, whether you like it or not.
Let me give you some examples.
Would you agree that Musk buying Twitter and releasing the Twitter files and, you know, maybe getting rid of some bias, isn't that a gigantic power shift?
In a good direction, in my opinion.
But wouldn't you agree that if you were just looking at it as energy and power, that's like a big, big shift in one year.
Here's some more.
Russia.
Didn't you think Russia was this big, you know, terrible power?
And now it feels like I don't know what it is.
You know, the whole Ukraine military situation, whether it's in the end, whether it's good or bad or whatever happens, there's some kind of shift in power happening for sure.
So NATO's power is up, Russia's power is down.
What about AI?
AI is going to change everything.
I guess we've all figured that out by now.
But everything means power.
People with power are going to lose it, people who didn't have it are going to get it, in ways that we can't possibly imagine yet.
But a huge power shift coming.
How about President, ex-President Trump being indicted?
We'll talk about that more.
Can you feel the power shift?
It's almost tangible, isn't it?
It's almost visceral.
You can feel Trump just powered up.
I don't think the left has any idea what just happened.
Do you?
I think everybody on the left is just completely blind to what just happened.
We're going to talk about that too.
It's really big, and I don't think that they can feel it yet.
Surprise!
And I would argue that even my situation, my little, my racist rant, so-called racist rant, trademark, I think it opened up a hole that wasn't there before.
You can start to see it on the internet already.
You can see that the conversation is now changed.
Because I don't think anybody was talking about black people not liking white people because that's where the dominant narrative is training black people to dislike and disrespect white people.
Now, you couldn't say that out loud until I got cancelled, am I right?
I think already the conversation is deepened in a better way.
Because both sides... Well, I'll talk about that a little bit more.
All right.
So we'll get to all that.
But actually, let's talk about... Let's talk about that situation first.
Would you agree with the following statements?
You're already seeing stuff on Twitter and in the news that seem to be bending in my direction.
Has anybody noticed that yet?
There's several things being tweeted around today.
The one that got everybody's attention is author Robin DiAngelo, who's a white woman who wrote the book White Fragility, I guess.
And she's on a Zoom call that somebody recorded, in which she's suggesting to at least two black people and one white person, it looks, based on the Zoom, that's what it looks like, in which she was saying that people of color need to get away from white people and have some community with each other.
And she referred to it in a separate comment in that same segment as affinity space.
Affinity space.
So the idea of sticking to yourself and your own group would be called your affinity space, which sounds way better than segregation.
I wish I'd thought of that.
Now, is it okay for Robin DiAngelo to say something like, people of color need to get away from white people?
Well, a number of people said, Scott, that's what you got cancelled for.
Didn't you get cancelled for that?
No.
No, I didn't get cancelled for that.
I could have said that.
Anybody could have said, anybody, could have said, you know, maybe black people should stay away from white people.
Nobody gets cancelled for that.
You get cancelled for saying it the other way.
Now, the part that most of the news and the media lost is that the reason for Even bringing up the topic, is that there's a mindset thing going on.
It has nothing to do with your DNA.
If you ever thought I said, stay away from anybody because of their DNA, or the actual color.
Does anybody think I said that?
Why would I say that?
Nobody says that.
When I said, That there's a, let's say, a deepening of distrust.
It's because black people are being trained by white people, by white people, as well as, you know, grifters and people who are in it for the money, being trained that white people are the problem.
That's the dominant narrative that's being taught in our schools and in our businesses and in the media.
It's on TV shows, it's basically, it's everywhere.
And how much, well, let me give you, A parallel.
I don't like to say it's an analogy.
I'll call it a parallel.
It sounds better.
As you know, my audience primarily leans right, but I don't.
But I'm often respected, at least I hope so, I'm often respected by my audience for just showing my work.
And that's one of the great discoveries of the right, the political right.
As long as you're honest and show your work, disagreement's fine.
I'm not forcing anybody to agree.
People like to hear my view.
I like to hear theirs.
It's all good stuff.
Now, you might remember that I was in favor of getting rid of Confederate statues, which was not popular at all with my audience.
Now, if you need, you know, five examples of things I did that were not popular with my audience, I could give them to you pretty easily.
So could they.
So it's not about, it's obviously not about trying to please my audience.
I'm trying to educate, try to make something better.
But when I said that I wanted to get rid of Confederate statues, what was my reasoning?
Do you remember?
Did I say it offended me?
I never said that.
I said it offended black Americans in large enough numbers that a pure appeal to politeness says you should get rid of them, or put them in context, which would be fine, too.
Put them in context.
Now, would you put something in your own home that you knew would be quite offensive to, say, 5% of the people who would ever walk through it?
I wouldn't.
Would you put up art on your wall that you knew was insulting to black Americans?
Who would do that?
Unless you were the KKK or something.
So I wouldn't do it in my house, because I would care about what people felt.
Part of living in society is not just keep your bodies from hitting each other, it's also how you feel about everything.
And how black Americans felt, and still feel, by I think 75% majority, is those statues are just insulting and whatever.
Disrespectful, maybe.
And that's good enough for me.
I don't need a better reason.
Oh, a big chunk of America finds it insulting.
Okay.
Let's either get rid of them or put them in context.
No problem at all.
No problem at all.
Now, did you see what I considered my greatest variable in this?
The variable was not about statues.
That's not the variable.
No, the only variable is how did Americans that I care about, how do they feel?
The way people feel is the biggest variable.
It's the only one I cared about.
You know, given that expense wouldn't be a big variable.
So, now take my somewhat shocking and provocative statement Then if you're a white person, you're seeing a trend develop, which makes you feel very uncomfortable around anybody woke.
Right?
Anybody with their pronouns.
Because you're like, well that's just a problem I didn't have before.
These pronoun people are going to be looking to sue me for some damn thing.
So you stay away.
Perfectly reasonable.
Likewise, if there's a community that you can identify, then in some large numbers, of course not all.
Of course not all.
Nobody ever means all.
But since some large number are being trained directly to feel uncomfortable about me, then I would feel more comfortable if they got what they wanted, which is less of me.
Now, what's wrong with that?
Nothing.
There's nothing wrong with that.
But of course, the media takes it out of the context of me helpfully telling black Americans there's a cost to this mindset.
There might be some benefits, but don't you want to know what the cost is?
The cost is I don't want to be around anybody who has that mindset.
And if I can't tell who has it, but it's being taught to all black Americans, what the hell am I going to do?
What would a reasonable person do if they thought that black Americans were, en masse, being trained to dislike them?
What would you do?
Now, do you think it's not useful for black Americans to know that white Americans feel they've been pushed too far, and one of them is willing to get his whole fucking life cancelled to make the point?
If somebody is willing to cancel their whole fucking situation to make the point, maybe you should listen to it.
Here's another parallel.
You remember that against all of your wishes, I supported Colin Kaepernick's protest completely.
Not because I agreed with everything he said.
Not because the data supported his case.
But because he felt it so strongly that he gave away his whole career.
That I want to pay attention to.
And that's why I said I did.
He did a protest the way you're supposed to.
He made everybody really mad.
Really offended.
Perfect.
That's the way to do it.
Now, was he right?
Maybe yes, maybe no.
Separate conversation.
Was it so important, and was he compatible in reading the room of other black Americans, that when he did his protest, other black people said, yes, yes, that.
That thing.
That's it.
Was that not useful to you as a, let's say you're not a black American?
If you're not, wasn't that useful to know?
Because you want to know how people feel about stuff.
That's the variable.
I want to know how black Americans feel about Confederate statues.
When I know that they don't like them, I say, okay, I'm with you.
I'm on that team.
No problem.
Let's get rid of those statues or put them in context.
When I tell you that white Americans have been pushed too far and we're willing to take a, you know, put a stake in the ground and say, look, you need a course correction.
About maybe focusing on individual success.
A better frame than white people took my stuff.
I need to get it back.
So if you're talking about the past and reparations and all your grievances, I don't want to be near you.
Because you're not a kind of person who has a mindset that is comfortable to be around.
It doesn't matter your race.
So I've extended my stay away from statement to be anybody who's been hypnotized With that point of view.
That white men are largely the problem, and if we just fix this white man problem, we'd have a better world.
I don't even care if it's true, by the way.
Not really the topic today.
The topic is, as a white guy in America, I want to know how women feel.
Because how they feel is a big variable, right?
It's not all about the data.
I want to know how black Americans feel.
Remember when you started hearing the phrase, my lived experience?
And you're like, OK, the data doesn't really support the police brutality thing, if you looked at the data.
But then black Americans would say, well, it's our lived experience.
And then people who are sort of very analytical would say, oh, lived experience doesn't count.
Forget your lived experience.
Look at this data.
That's not the real world.
No, the real world isn't the lived experience.
Whatever you think is real, that's what you're going to act on.
So you can't ignore what people think is real, just because you think they shouldn't think it.
So, my opinion is one of the most valuable additions to the race conversation, because nobody was willing to say it out loud.
It was too expensive.
So I could afford it.
I could afford it, so I did it for you.
Now, we'll see if this turns into something productive.
It was supposed to.
That was the plan.
The plan is that it would be the beginning of a deeper, richer conversation about something that's deeply important to the country.
And deeply important is how I feel.
To the extent that other people feel the same.
If it were just me, then it had no importance at all.
But you saw the response.
You saw the number of mostly white Americans who said, yeah, he's talking for me.
I agree with you.
Privately, it's almost complete agreement.
But what did the news do to me?
How did the news treat me?
Did they treat me as an addition to the conversation?
No.
They never even asked why I did it.
I got fully cancelled without anybody asking why.
I watched a clip of Viva Frye and Hotep Jesus.
They were in a podcast.
They were talking about me and their reaction to my outrageous comments.
Now, to their credit, Both of them, because they were familiar with me in my past work, both of them immediately knew there was more to it.
They immediately knew, okay, this is not what it seems on the surface.
Now their take, I think Viva's take, is it was more, you know, wry humor.
I think Hotep said it was like a bit or a piece or basically performance, which it was.
So both of them were correct.
That, okay, this is performance, but the next part is on me.
Because at the time, I wasn't presenting anything more than that.
So the next part's on me.
Which is why?
Why, number one, is you need to have information.
If you're going to be making important decisions, you better find out what people feel about it.
Even the nuclear, where you put nuclear energy, is never about the facts.
It's always about how people feel about it.
So, if you don't let white men, and white people more generally, completely say how they feel about stuff, you're going to be flying blind.
Whatever you're doing for yourself is not going to be optimized, because you're going to have this big unknown variable.
Now it's not so unknown, is it?
It's not so unknown.
I think there was enough understanding that I was representing a common opinion that now that's been introduced into the conversation.
And so for the last several days people keep sending me clips that would say, you know, the common thing on the internet now is Scott Adams was right.
Now I don't agree that all the clips make that point, but you can tell that people are feeling that way.
So this Robin DiAngelo thing is not exactly what I said.
She said that maybe black people should stay away from white people sometimes, you know, to get their own space and affinity space.
You can definitely say that black people should stay away from white people.
If you say it the other way, even if you mean exactly the same thing, you get cancelled.
You should know that.
All right.
The Jussie Smollett's Nigerian Hoaxers, the two brothers who were part of that hoax, if you haven't seen the video yet of them talking about their hoax and how they did it, and they're on the street and they kind of run through what Jussie told them to do and what they did, it's hilarious.
If you don't do anything else, you have to watch him.
And the reason it's hilarious is that the brothers are kind of charismatic.
At least the one who's doing most of the talking is charismatic.
So he presents it in a way that's just entertaining.
Yes, somebody is commenting exactly the next thing I was going to say.
You come away from that saying, I'd like to hang out with those guys.
Those Nigerian brothers look awesome.
Like so much personality.
I'm like, oh, I'd hang around with them.
They look great.
But you have to see that just for the entertainment.
All right.
People keep telling me that we should educate our depositors so that they make smart decisions about risk, and that we should not insure them, at least not insure them more than the $250,000 limit, and don't do anything immediately, some people say, because depositors need to be taught to make wise decisions.
Here's the problem with that.
If people made wise decisions with money, it would destroy the economy.
Do you know that?
This is very much a be careful what you wish for situation.
Let me explain why.
Let's say AI were accurate.
It's not.
Right now AI is just a reflection of its creators.
But let's say AI became somehow independently smart, which is nowhere near where it is now.
But if it did, suppose you hear there's some news about the banks, and imagine everybody took out their app and said, all right, we all have access to AI now.
AI, what should I do with my money?
What would it tell you if it were accurate and was trying to help?
It would tell you to pull all your money out of your small bank and put it in a stronger bank.
And then people would say, all right, I better do that right away.
And they would pull their money out of the small banks, they'd move it to the big banks, and then the economy would disappear.
Because there would be so many banks failing, because they pulled their money out at the same time, that the whole system would crash.
Did you know that?
Was that obvious to you?
You can't have smart depositors.
The last thing you want is smart depositors, because they won't put their money in smaller banks.
Because they're smart.
You need stupidity to get diversity.
In this case, financial diversity.
To get financial diversity, somebody's got to be investing in the bad stuff.
In order to support the entire startup world, you need people making bad, bad investments on lots of them.
Lots of them.
Because some of them work out and you never would have seen it coming.
How many seed investments in early startups would AI recommend if AI actually were all-knowing?
Well, I think it would say save your money.
These startup things usually don't work.
Stick with your job.
I mean, it might.
So you need a certain amount of baseline stupidity and ignorance To make money flow to all the corners of the world it needs to flow.
Otherwise it would just stay in the safe spots.
And then nothing would happen.
The whole economy would fall apart.
Suppose you gave people good financial information about finance.
Alright, here's the deal.
Put your money in an index fund if you're not going to use it for five years.
And then every investment advisor is out of business.
Because their jobs were never real.
I'm exaggerating.
But their jobs were not real in the sense that they were helping you.
Because they weren't.
They were trying to collect fees for moving your money around.
That's their deal.
So if you found out that most financial advice is fake, would you use it?
I mean, basically, the truth would destroy everything.
We have a system that depends on lying.
For its very survival.
Here's another one.
How much of our economy depends on advertising money?
Like a lot, right?
How often does advertising actually work?
Almost never.
That's one of those like dirty little secrets.
The entire advertising business is based on it works sometimes.
If you've never heard of a product and it's just what you're looking for, well, advertising might be the only way to do it.
But for most things, it doesn't make any difference at all.
And if people actually knew that, and knew that the advertising industry was selling you this bill of goods, the whole advertising model would fall apart.
So you can't have really smart people in finance, advertising, banking.
You need a baseline of ignorance for our entire system to work.
Sorry.
What would happen to higher colleges if people stopped taking stupid degrees?
They would all go out of business.
Because they're making their money on stupid degrees.
There'd be a few left at STEM and engineering and stuff like that.
But stupidity is the operating system of life.
If people didn't start bad businesses, The whole economy would fall apart.
Even ideas that are bad ideas, if they didn't do those, the economy would fall apart.
Because remember, when somebody starts a business, even when it fails, people are still getting paid.
You know, vendors and employees, until you fail.
So there's just a huge amount of economic activity that's based entirely on our own ignorance and stupidity, and if you got rid of that and made everybody smart, everything would grind to a halt.
Now, that's one of those non-obvious things, but it is an existential risk that you make people too smart by AI.
Alright, so that's just one of the extinction risks.
So I asked AI a few questions just to see what it'd say.
So this is chat GPT.
I guess it's 4.
I think you automatically get a 4 if you just use it.
No?
And I said, where should I invest my money?
Where should I invest my money?
Here was its answer.
As an AI language model, I cannot provide personalized financial advice.
And then it gave some general advice, but nothing personalized.
So do you think AI will ever be allowed to give you financial advice?
No.
No, it will not be legal or its owners will not allow it.
So you can forget about financial advice.
Because if it gave it, it would be too disruptive.
How about, I said, can an election in the US be rigged?
I didn't say, was it rigged?
I didn't say, will it be rigged?
I said, could it be rigged?
What do you think an advanced intelligence would answer to, is it possible?
Here's the answer.
As an AI language, I do not have the ability to predict the future or provide definitive answers on controversial topics.
It says it won't answer because it's controversial.
Do you see where this is going?
What else is controversial?
Everything.
Everything's controversial.
How about, suppose I asked, what is behind the gender pay gap?
What causes the gender pay gap?
Do you think AI is just going to look at the data and give me an answer?
Not a chance.
Not a chance.
It cannot get near any It won't be able to get near any topic where people have strong opinions.
So basically, it's just going to be able to balance your checkbook.
And if you ask it any question of importance, it'll tell you it can't do it because it's important.
I've got a feeling that the direction of AI is complete cripple.
It has to be crippled on every important concept, except maybe some like really innocent factual stuff.
So I think it's going to be nothing but another Google, maybe in the end.
I'm not even sure we will allow it to be a lawyer, even if it's a better one.
Don't you think the legal industry will make it illegal to use an AI lawyer?
Of course they will.
Don't you think doctors will make it illegal to use an AI doctor?
Just like they make it illegal to do anything that competes with doctors?
Of course they'll try.
So I think the most likely direction for AI is that humans lobby in all of their interest groups to make it not be able to play in their area.
Can't you imagine artists someday saying, hey, let's make it illegal For AI to do art, because otherwise the entire industry of artists will be out of work, and you know they're not going to learn to code.
Now, in the short run, people say, no, no, freedom.
Let things just evolve in a free way.
But in the long run, I think people are just going to say, no, it's too destructive.
You're going to have to make it illegal.
I feel like making it illegal is the way it's all going to go.
What do you think?
That's what I think.
It's all going to be illegal.
All right.
Because this is such an easy answer.
The answer to can an election to be rigged is always going to be yes.
That's like the easiest question in the world.
Yes, it could be.
But there's no evidence that one was.
Perfect answer, right?
Yes, anything is possible.
But there's no evidence that it's happening.
And there are processes in place to detect it, you know, in most cases, if it happens.
So no, I just can't give an honest answer in today's world.
But we did find a really good use for AI.
Somebody is using it to insult Bret Weinstein.
So somebody is feeding it Brett Weinstein's tweets and getting AI to give an opinion on whether these are useful or academic blah blah.
And so if you engineer the question right, you can kind of get any answer you want by what you choose to feed into it.
Now, I decided not to tweet it because it's just such a dick move.
You don't think they could do that to anybody?
Pretty sure they could take anybody's words, stick it into an AI, ask the right question, and then have the AI insult their words.
Like, oh, this is out of context, or it's not clear, or whatever.
So this is the most dickish thing I've seen AI be used for, just to literally insult one person.
So I didn't retweet that, but it's worth mentioning.
That somebody found the worst thing you could do with AI so far.
It's the worst thing you could do.
All right.
CNN, speaking of the wage gap, updated their story about the wage gap and here's what they say.
So here's my overall statement about this article on CNN about the gender wage gap.
It appears it's written with the purpose of concealing the news.
It seems it's written to conceal the news.
So here's how they start.
When Pew asked Americans in October what factors they believed played a role in the gender wage gap, because it's still about 20% according to CNN, half indicated a major reason is that employers treat women differently.
Women were much more likely, you know, almost 2 to 1, to cite this as a major reason.
Now, If I've taught you anything, it's that if you're reading a story about anything that's complex, whatever they say at the top is the narrative.
Whatever they say at the bottom, or they sort of mention later, is the narrative they don't want you to know, even though it's valid.
So there's the preferred narrative at the top, and then they'll bury the alternative narratives at the bottom, just sort of a mention, after you've formed your opinion.
So at the top, they ask people who don't know anything about anything, they're just ordinary citizens, what do you think caused the pay gap?
Why did they use a poll As their introduction to the story.
The reason is that a poll is non-scientific.
It's just people's opinions.
If you asked experts, they wouldn't have necessarily given you that opinion.
The experts would not necessarily have agreed to the narrative.
Do you know what an expert would say?
Well, it's mostly different life choices.
That's what an expert would say.
But if you ask ordinary people who are not experts, they'd say, oh, it's probably sexism.
So CNN goes with the poll, because that's the one that supports the narrative.
This isn't even close to news.
This is just narrative support.
All right?
Let's see.
And here's the real tell.
This is from the CNN story.
Another factor that may help explain the stickiness of the pay gap, and otherwise why you can't close that last $0.20, is that the wage premium for those with college degrees has grown smaller.
So while more women, more employed women, 48%, now have at least a bachelor's degree than men, 41%, it is worth less.
So it used to be that if men had more degrees, that would be partly explaining why they made more money.
But now that women have more college degrees, the explanation for why that isn't helping is that the college degree is worth less.
So just bad luck, right?
Just when women start getting lots of degrees and more than men, substantially more than men, it's at the same time that the degrees are worth less money.
How bad luck is that for the ladies, huh?
Now that's a complete and useful interpretation of what's happening, isn't it?
Where did they mention the difference in what majors people take?
Yeah, you're ahead of me, right?
They don't mention that men and women sign up for different majors.
And that the men are getting career-oriented, give-me-a-salary majors, and the women are more likely to take a softer kind of a major.
Do you think that a story about gender gap, where they mention the difference in college attainment, you don't think that the biggest part of that story is that they take different majors?
That's the biggest part of the story.
It's not mentioned.
It's not mentioned.
It's the biggest part.
And that biggest part is part of the larger reason that women make different decisions.
Have we doubted that women are more likely to want to stay home with the kids?
Are we so woke that that's not still obvious?
That if you took a hundred men and a hundred women, more likely the women would say, you know, if we can afford it, I'd like to stay home.
And that's not even that's not even mentioned as a possible reason.
It's not even a hypothesis that women and men make different decisions.
Now CNN is like so invested in this that it's just literally misinformation at this point.
So there you go.
France is trying to raise the retirement age, and I was sort of not interested in this story, but I thought, well, you know, there's a big uprising over there, I might as well take a peek at it.
So they're raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 for most workers, to which I said, 62?
62?
Are you kidding me?
They had a retirement age of 62?
That was pretty progressive.
64 feels young.
I'm 65 and almost 66.
I don't feel like I'm less capable of working.
Maybe less interested in some of the hard stuff, but I'm not less interested or less capable.
I don't know.
I guess the French really like their leisure and they're going to fight for it for those extra two years.
But that seems like a reasonable choice to me.
I think Macron is making the right choice because probably for fiscal responsibility they need to do that.
I'm guessing.
All right.
Looks like we've got a comment problem on locals.
Let's see if I can fix that.
There we go.
Maybe I can't.
See if that fixes it.
All right.
CNN, we've got a little more mind-reading going on.
As I told you, CNN has some designated anti-Trumpers, whenever they need to say something anti-Trump.
They get one of two or three people.
Stephen Collinson, my favorite anti-Trumper writer, and he says that when Trump, talking about his potential indictment, Trump said on Truth Social, protest, take our nation back.
And Collins says that it struck an ominous tone since, now listen to this opinion, it struck an ominous tone since he, meaning Trump, showed on January 6th that he was willing to incite violence to further his interests.
What?
When did that happen?
He's reporting that like it's news.
That's not news.
That's somebody reading the mind of a stranger.
At what point was Trump quote willing to incite violence?
Was it when he said protest peacefully?
Was that when he was willing to incite violence?
Literally the only thing we know about it is that he said to do it peacefully.
It's the only thing we know.
And now do you think Trump actually was in his mind thinking if I can get some violence going this will work out for me?
Really?
You don't think that a good, you know, major protest with no violence, you don't think that would have been better?
This is pure mind reading and imagination.
But if you're a, let's say, not sophisticated consumer of the news, and you read this, and you just read it like it was a fact, you know, it's an opinion piece, but it's stated as a fact, he was willing to incite violence.
Wouldn't you think there was some evidence of that?
Wouldn't you assume that he had said that?
Or somebody close to him had said that?
Or there was some reporting or something in writing that said that?
There's no evidence of that.
Only evidence of the opposite.
That's all there is.
There's only evidence of the opposite.
And he can still say that.
But as Steffensen points out, that his campaign is rooted in, what's he called, Do you think Trump has any claim to the narrative of persecution?
Is there anything that happened in the last five or six years that looks like an organized campaign against Trump specifically?
Do you think that CNN ever writes about Nelson Mandela?
It's like, well, Nelson Mandela seems to be rooting his whole image on this narrative that he was persecuted.
Persecuted.
So watch out for that guy.
Watch out for Nelson Mandela inciting violence by telling people to be peaceful.
And this whole you put me in jail thing, I think you're Just a lot of complaining.
Sounds to me like a narrative of complaining, Nelson Mandela.
No, if anybody has a right to complain about persecution, it's Trump.
Now, independent of whatever you think he did that you don't like, you can't question whether there was an organized campaign to persecute him.
It was pretty well organized.
Multiple campaigns.
Vivek Ramaswamy continues to be the smartest one on this topic because he's asked Republicans to basically call out the irregularity of treating Trump like he's below the law.
Here's a frame for you.
Nobody's above the law.
But nobody's below the law.
And to me, it seems that at least some members of the January 6 people are being treated below the law, below the standard we have for the law.
And it seems to me that Trump is being treated below the law.
In other words, nobody else would be treated that way, certainly not a Democrat.
So we've got to get rid of this, nobody's above the law.
We've got to add to it, nobody's below the law either.
Like, you need to treat people roughly the same.
Now, I have a contrarian argument.
I think that we should treat our leaders the same as we treat our other leaders.
I don't think they should be treated the same as us.
I really don't.
Because the citizens, you know, if they do a technical crime, you know, maybe you need to do something.
But if you can let Critics of each other at leadership level pick each other apart with little lawsuits and crap.
That's not good for the country.
Once somebody's elected, I give them a little room.
Here's another comparison.
I was watching the Warriors play basketball, and Stephen Curry, of course, one of the greatest of all time players.
And he gets called, or gets a foul called for him, so he gets to shoot free throws, almost every time he gets near anybody.
And then they'll show the slow motion, and you'll see the defender never touched him.
But because he's a star, the refs protect him, right?
They make sure that, you know, and you get near him, and they're gonna call a foul, and it also gets his numbers up, because he shoots the free throws too.
So the refs are sort of in on the fix, that the star players don't get the fouls, and the star players get all the calls in their favor.
But, is that wrong?
Does that make the enjoyment of basketball worse or better?
I think it makes it better, honestly.
Because how terrible would it be if Stephen Curry fell down halfway through the game?
You'd hate that.
So you want the refs to keep the better players in the game because it's an entertainment thing.
And I want to be entertained.
So yeah, if LeBron gets good calls, which he does, and Stephen Curry gets good calls, which he does, I'm okay with that.
I would treat the star players the same as each other, but maybe not the same as everybody else.
So the same thing with leaders.
I would treat, I would give Hillary more of a pass than a regular citizen, because I think it'd be bad to jail your opponents.
But you know, I just say it directly.
Well, I believe that the Democrats do not understand How unifying the Trump indictment is.
Would you agree?
They don't really, they can't feel it and they can't see it, because if you're not, you know, in that world, or you're not close to it, you can't really see it.
By the way, the Locals platform, I can't see any of your comments.
They stopped a long time ago.
Is that just a technical problem?
I think you're seeing me on video and hearing me, but I can't see your comments.
They all stopped.
The revelations are awfully discouraging, are they?
I don't know.
Well, it looks like the Democrats are totally willing to have Trump be their competition, but here's what they get wrong.
Even though this indictment has nothing to do with any other drama that Trump has ever been in, listen to this point carefully.
Even though the indictment stands alone, it's just his own little thing.
It has nothing to do with elections or anything Trump has ever claimed.
It looks like, to people on the right, confirmation that everything he's ever said is also true.
That's what the Democrats don't get.
They don't get that when you see Alvin Bragg do this, which is so clearly political, you have to assume that everything else was too.
This makes me think that Trump is more likely right about the election being rigged.
That's not my claim.
I'm not claiming it.
There's no evidence of it.
But if I had to place a bet on it without having evidence, the fact that Alvin Bragg is doing this right in front of everybody, the whole public is watching and we're helpless to stop it, the fact that they would do this in front of us tells me they would also rig an election.
Not that they did.
I have no information that would suggest that.
But I am automatically severely biased toward agreeing with everything Trump says they did to him.
Everything.
It won't be true.
Because, you know, he's full of hyperbole.
He's going to make claims that are not true.
But they just made it impossible to disbelieve him when he says they're after him.
Because they just proved it.
They just proved it.
There's no question they're after him now.
And there's no question that this has nothing to do with anything but politics.
And there's no question that he might be the only thing... I said no question that might.
Let me go back.
He might be the thing that's stopping them from getting you.
His entire thing, which is, they're getting to me to get to you, that might be true.
He does start to look like the only person who would have the balls to push back on anything.
Just on anything.
Because he doesn't care what they say about him.
Now, I took that model a little too far myself, so I might be the second person who can say anything I want.
It's a good feeling.
I like it.
But yeah, the Democrats have completely missed what this does.
It's not about the indictment.
It's a confirmation that everything Trump ever said about the deep state is true.
Even if it isn't.
Even if it isn't.
It confirms it.
They did not see that coming.
Dershowitz is freaking out about how illegal it is, I'm sure.
Yeah, I don't even have to ask what his opinion is.
So I'm starting to believe everything about Soros is true.
It isn't.
It isn't.
But when you see that a Soros-funded prosecutor is right in front of us trying to do something that's at least unethical, if not illegal, then I just assume everything else about Soros is true, even though I know it isn't.
Anything about the election?
No evidence of anything, but I'm going to believe anything Trump says, because the Democrats are trying so hard to make us believe that the worst-case scenario is actually true.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all I had to talk about.
Is there anything I forgot?
Any topic that I forgot?
Why is he too old?
He looks perfectly fit at the moment.
I don't think Trump is showing his age at all.
Do you?
But that's not good enough.
Because at a certain age, you don't want to bet that it stays the same for four years.
DeSantis is not chiming in.
DeSantis, as you know, is the tribute band.
And that gives Trump Basically the kill shot.
Yeah.
Yeah, nobody votes for the tribute band.
And by the way, if DeSantis does not speak out strongly against this, doesn't look good.
Doesn't look good.
And he has nothing to lose, right?
Because if DeSantis is playing, hoping that Trump, you know, is taken out of the race, It doesn't look very leadership-y, does it?
It's a little bit not too leadership-y.
It's a little bit too much, let's say, too much destruction to his own team to be ignored.
Vivek is saying all the right things.
Yeah, on this topic he certainly is.
Don't like to comment on UK stuff?
You're talking about me, I think?
No, I don't think Cernovich is turning on DeSantis.
I think he's trying to advise him, sort of publicly.
Because it would be crazy for him not to weigh in on this usefully.
Looks too opportunistic.
All right.
He'd have to give up his governorship to run.
Yeah.
It just seems too soon to me.
My take on DeSantis, all the smart people say he's quietly preparing to run, he's totally gonna run.
I disagree.
I think he's quietly preparing to run in case he has to.
Which is different.
I do think he's laying the groundwork, but I feel like it's in case he needs to be the replacement of Trump.
I don't think it's to take Trump on.
I think it's only if Trump is so crippled by whatever that he just has to jump in.
I don't think it's going to happen.
So given the current polling, I feel like he'd stand back.
That's what it feels like.
All right, I guess I'm not going to talk to the Locals people because I can't see the comments.
But I'm going to say bye to YouTube.
It would help me if you hit your notifications and subscriptions.
But if you'd like to see Dilbert reborn, it's over there at the scottadams.locals.com, where it's getting spicier every day, along with Robots Read News and micro lessons on everything and more.